Enrique's Impressions of E3

We're chiming in on E3 impressions this week! I'm going to throw a wet blanket on this party and say I'm not a big fan of E3. On one hand, it's nice to see what's in development and what's slated for launch by the end of year. On the other hand, any gameplay footage shown isn't guaranteed to represent the final product. Putting away my E3 bingo card and shoving my pessimism aside, I'll talk about what I hope to hear announced and a bit on what I saw from Microsoft's E3 presentation.

Wishlist

God of War 4

I'm a sucker for hack n' slash/beat 'em up games. I loved playing the God of War series in my youth! The Quick Time Events(QTE's) mixed into the combat kept it very active and fun for me and I always felt compelled to do hard mode runs after completing the game. Even now, I have God of War 2 loaded up on my Vita when I'm in the mood to break out the Blades of Chaos. While what was shown at E3 2016 wasn't what I expected, I look forward to any additional information we can get during this year's E3.

Borderlands 3

As far as I know, there has been no news on Borderlands 3 but I hope to hear something about it this year. Back when it debuted, I loved how Borderlands 1 combined the loot mechanics I was accustomed to as a diehard Diablo fan with an FPS. Like, not the Telltale games though. Those were nice but I want a loot driven FPS! I think the series is charming and I hope to see a new entry soon.

Fire Emblem Warriors

Fire Emblem Warriors(F.E.W.) was announced early 2017 and will be made by the same team as Hyrule Warriors. Like Hyrule Warriors, F.E.W. will be a collaboration between Nintendo an Koei-Tecmo's hack n' slash Warriors franchise such as Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. What I enjoyed most of Hyrule Warriors was how it took elements from the Legend of Zelda series and made them work with the hack n' slash style of play. For example, if you use a specific sub-weapon on a specific enemy, it would stun them and reveal their weak-point gauge, which deals massive damage once depleted. Another neat touch was the Adventure Mode, which had you travel around a map grid completing missions. These missions would unlock weapons and items that would strengthen your character. They would also hold item cards that you would you to traverse further through the map, such as a bomb card to break through boulders blocking your path or a hookshot card to circumvent a broken path. I'm curious to see how the weapon triangle and class system is reflected in F.E.W. I don't want to set my expectations too high for Fire Emblem Warriors but I hope it will receive as much detail as Hyrule Warriors did.

Microsoft's E3 2017 Presentation

By the time I caught Microsoft's presentation, I had already missed about half of it(I think?) That's what I get for trying to grind out a few levels in Overwatch during double xp. I did like what little I saw though, in particular Sea of Thieves, Anthem and Crackdown 3. The only game I hear of prior to the presentation was Sea of Thieves. I believe this was announced last year? I don't want to get too excited for the game but it looks really fun as a co-op game. I'm hoping we can get people to play it around the shop and do pirate things like search for treasure or getting into naval battles. Anthem also looks like a fun co-op game. I think the suit and way it flew reminded me of Dark Void. Never played the game. Honestly, I was suckered into caring for Crackdown 3 because of Terry Crews in the reveal trailer. I heard of the Crackdown series before but have never played it personally. Like Anthem, it looks like an open world game where you go around doing as you please. Although, Crackdown 3 looks more like a single player game where Anthem looked like you want to bring a 4-man squad to explore the game. This is all baseless speculation anyway.

That's that. By the time this blog rolls out Sony's E3 presentation to should be starting up. Like I said, I hope to hear more about God of War. Not sure if I'm more excited about that or new IPs announced. It's always fun to see games that could be the "next big thing". But on the other hand, I value the final product over any promotion material/tech demo that gets cranked out for these type of things.